UCL News

Services

Get updates from UCL News

Tuning the brain: how piano tuning may cause changes to brain structure

29 August 2012

Wellcome Trust-funded scientists at UCL have shown that working
as a piano tuner may lead to changes in the structure of the memory and
navigation areas of the brain. The study, published today in the Journal of
Neuroscience, shows that these structural differences
correlate with the number of years of experience a piano tuner has accumulated.

Piano tuning involves listening to the sound of two notes played
simultaneously (a two-note chord) and 'navigating' between sequences of
chords in which one note is already tuned and the other has to be
adjusted. Interaction between the sounds produced by the two notes
produces a wobbling sound (known as a 'beat'). Tuners detect the
frequency of this fluctuation (the 'beat rate') and adjust it so that
the two notes are in tune. Since different combinations of notes in a
chord produce different frequencies, tuners use these beat rates as a
form of acoustic 'signpost' in the virtual 'pitch space' of a piano to
help them tune subsequent notes in a systematic manner.

Researchers at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging at UCL and
Newcastle University used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to examine
how the brain structures of 19 professional piano tuners differed from
those of 19 controls. The tuners, from across the UK, all tune pianos by
ear, without the use of any electronic instruments.

Sundeep Teki from UCL, joint first author of the study, explains:
"Piano tuning is a unique profession and this motivated us to
investigate physical changes in the brain of tuners that may develop
over several years of repeated acoustic practice. We already know that
musical training can correlate with structural changes, but our group of
professionals offered a rare opportunity to examine the ability of the brain to adapt over time to a very specialised form of listening."

We already know that musical training can correlate with structural changes, but our group of professionals offered a rare opportunity to examine the ability of the brain to adapt over time to a very specialised form of listening.

Sundeep Teki, Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging at UCL

The researchers found highly specific changes in both the grey matter
(the nerve cells where information processing takes place) and the
white matter (the connections between cells) within a particular part of
the brain: the hippocampus. These changes significantly correlated with
the number of years that tuners have been performing the task. The
changes were not related to age or to musical expertise. In fact,
musical expertise and perfect pitch are not necessary for the basic
skill practised by tuners.

"Perhaps surprisingly, the changes related to tuning experience that
we found were not in the auditory part of the brain. In fact, they
actually occurred in the hippocampus, a part of the brain traditionally
associated with memory and navigation,"adds Dr Sukhbinder Kumar from
Newcastle University, joint first author.

Similar changes related to navigational expertise have previously
been demonstrated in a different part of the hippocampus in a study of
taxi drivers by Professor Eleanor Maguire, also based at Wellcome Trust
Centre for Neuroimaging at UCL.

Professor Tim Griffiths from Newcastle University, who led the
current study, says: "There has been little work on the role of the
hippocampus in auditory analysis. Our study is consistent with a form of
navigation in pitch space as opposed to the more accepted role in
spatial navigation."